1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to a cowl side portion of automobiles and, more particularly, to a reinforcement structure for such a cowl side portion, the reinforcement structure being designed to change a locking structure between the cowl side portion and two front pillars, thus giving improved structural strength to a side portion of the automobile body and allowing the side portion of the body to effectively protect passengers in the passenger compartment from impact in the case of a side collision or a front collision of the automobile.
2. Description of the Prior Art
FIG. 1 is a perspective view of the body of an automobile. As shown in FIG. 1, the front portion of the automobile body comprises an engine compartment for seating an engine and a power transmission mechanism, with a hood 1 openably covering the engine compartment. A longitudinal front pillar 3 upwardly, rearwardly extends from around each of the left and right corners of the hood's rear portion and holds the side edge of a windshield. Two front fenders 5 are provided along the left and right side edges of the hood 1 and are mounted over the two front wheels 4. FIG. 2 shows the interior structure of the portion "P" of FIG. 1. As shown in the drawing, the two front pillars 3 are welded to opposite ends of a cowl portion 6 through a welding process, with the cowl portion 6 transversely extending in the automobile body to partition the passenger compartment from the engine compartment.
FIG. 3 shows the welded junction between the front pillar 3 and the cowl side portion 6. As shown in the drawing, each front pillar 3 comprises inside and outside pillar panels 3a and 3b, which are welded together with an outside door panel 7 into a single body with a cavity having a predetermined volume. In addition, a front cowl panel 6a of the cowl portion 6 is integrated with the front junction of the two pillar panels 3a and 3b of the front pillar 3. On the other hand, a rear cowl panel 6b of the cowl portion 6 is integrated with the inside pillar panels 3a of the front pillar 3 into a single body using a cowl side extension panel 8.
A door hinge reinforcing bracket 9 is mounted to the interior surface of the outside pillar panel 3b of the front pillar 3. In such a conventional structure, the bracket 9 reaches the inside pillar panel 3a of the front pillar 3, but undesirably is not welded to the panel 3a.
In order to weld the bracket 9 to the panel 3a inside the front pillar 3, the bracket must be extended and it is necessary to allow a welding gun G to reach the inside and outside portion of the panel 3a as shown by the phantom line of FIG. 3. However, the interior of the front pillar 3 is completely closed, and so it is impossible for the welding gun G to reach the inside portion of the panel 3a. Therefore, the bracket 9 is not welded to the panel 3a.
In the conventional automobile body with the cowl portion 6 being welded to the front pillars 3 as described above, it is impossible to firmly assemble the cowl portion 6 with the front pillars 3 or to effectively distribute impact to the parts in the case of an unexpected side collision or an unexpected front collision of the automobile. In addition, each front pillar 3 of the conventional structure is not provided with a separate member designed to connect the two panels 3a and 3b, and so each front pillar 3 merely has low torsion strength.